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Parking in a cashless society slowly evolving in Cornwall

The city's move to pay-and-display terminals instead of parking meters is bringing in more money and now administration has said it looking at a smart phone app. Photo taken on Friday February 9, 2018 in Cornwall, Ont.

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Cornwall’s shift towards a pay-and-display parking system and away from the traditional coin-operated parking meters has been a good one, according to the city.

Now the city is investigating the possibility of letting people pay for parking with their phones.

During the most recent budget meeting at city hall on Feb. 9, chief building official Chris Rogers said that not only is pay-and-display bringing in more money; the terminals are easier to maintain, it’s also more convenient for local motorists.

“Revenue has been trending upward recently due to credit-card friendly pay-and-display machines on the street. The reality is that many of us don’t carry cash anymore so these machines are quite user-friendly,” said Rogers

Because the machines are still fairly new and there are fewer of them than the meters they’re replacing, so far they’ve cost quite a bit less to maintain than the meters. They’re also easier for snow clearing operations since you only need to keep the terminal clear and not every single meter head.

For all those reasons, Rogers said the plan is to continue phasing in pay-and-display across the city.

“One pay-and-display machine replaces about 10 meter heads, so we are moving increasingly to install these pay-and-display machines,” said Rogers.

With parking in Cornwall increasingly going digital when it comes to paying on the street, councillors wanted to know when the city will take that next step and allow people to pay for parking on their phones as many other municipalities have done.

“That’s the one complaint that I have heard is that you can’t do that while sitting in your restaurant or whatever,” said Coun. Bernadette Clement.

General manager of planning, development and recreation Mark Boileau said city administration is already looking at the system the City of Kingston has implemented to provide mobile parking payments.

The app in question is Honk Mobile, which was created by a private company located in Toronto. To use the app, the user puts their car’s licence plate number into the app and can pay for however much parking time they want through the app using a credit card, a Visa debit card, PayPal, ApplePay or Masterpass.

Bylaw officers have a real-time list of licence plate numbers that have paid, so they won’t ticket the car even if the meter is at zero minutes, or there isn’t a slip from a pay-and-display machine.

Honk Mobile has the ability for people to reserve parking sports before even leaving for work, but this feature is not used in Kingston.

Boileau said Honk Mobile could very easily be added on top of Cornwall’s current parking system.

“From what I’ve read about the Kingston system, it would be complementary to the pay-and-display machines,” said Boileau. “They would just be two different ways to pay.”

Coun. Carilyne Hebert noted St. Lawrence College and the Via Rail station uses Honk Mobile for their parking lots in Cornwall, and suggested those are already a jumping-off point for implementation of the app in Cornwall.